The present invention relates generally to containers and more particularly to a cargo container apparatus including a sandwich structure and a track.
It has long been desired in the box trailer industry to have walls and floors made of lightweight and strong panels which are strongly joined together. Most conventional trailer walls and floors, however, require a foam filling, which prevents recycling, and thicker than desired outer sheets of metal, thereby increasing trailer weight which wastes fuel and/or lessens cargo carrying capacity. Furthermore, traditional tracks, posts and joints are heavy, complicated and labor intensive to install. Many also protrude within the cargo space and are prone to snagging by cargo when inserted in the trailer. Exemplary conventional attempts at such a construction are disclosed in the following United States patents and patent publication: U.S. Pat. No. 7,100,971 entitled “Cargo Body with Recessed Posts” which issued to Pines on Sep. 5, 2006; U.S. Pat. No. 8,016,152 entitled “Container Sidewall Connector” which issued to Roush et al. on Sep. 13, 2011; and 2013/0224419 entitled “Composite Panel and Joint Construction” which published to Lee et al. on Aug. 29, 2013. All of these are incorporated by reference herein.
It is noteworthy, however, that these conventional approaches still suffer the same snagging concerns and the panel-to-panel attachments are expensive to manufacture. Furthermore, most traditional devices require additional add-on attachment brackets which span between the adjacent panels; but these configurations typically require juggling of many loose parts, such as rivets, while attempting to align and hold the panels in position, along with undesired extra part handling and weight. The localized attachment points also undesirably concentrate the forces during use thereby creating premature panel fractures at the localized points. Moreover, prior panel-to-panel seams sometimes allow water entry such as in rainy weather which can harm the cargo transported in the container.